HE/AP should have separate ammo counters.

[WelshZeCorgi]

Is it weird that the ammo count mixes/shares HE and AP? And that you can fire your entire ammo load in AP or HE shells, like you never had one or the other on board? Shouldn't you run out of AP or HE shells and be forced to used the other type?

[Cptbarney]

yeah, i think other ammo types should be added in as well, since i doubt they used APCBC back in 1890. Plus each ammo type can have adv and dis such as better velocity, better speeds, pen rates, damage, module damage, cost, weight, complexity, time to make, max quality, reload etc.

again would give more replayability and also choices that the players would have to make in tight or unusual events.

[arkhangelsk]

It is more realistic to separate them, but you do have to balance this against the complexity of pre-planning that this forces onto the players. Imagine this screen popping up:

Naval Battle: Close to your Home Port
Available forces: 4 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 12 light cruisers, 36 destroyers.
Accept / Decline fight.

You click Accept and instead of warping into the battle, you are stalled by a screen:

Please select the loadout you want for your battleships.

And you have to select (or confirm) ammo for 60 ships before you can flip into combat...

[WelshZeCorgi]

1 hour ago, arkhangelsk said:

It is more realistic to separate them, but you do have to balance this against the complexity of pre-planning that this forces onto the players. Imagine this screen popping up:

Naval Battle: Close to your Home Port
Available forces: 4 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 12 light cruisers, 36 destroyers.
Accept / Decline fight.

You click Accept and instead of warping into the battle, you are stalled by a screen:

Please select the loadout you want for your battleships.

And you have to select (or confirm) ammo for 60 ships before you can flip into combat...

Why would you do that? Couldn't it just be 50/50 by default? Or when you build your ship, select AP heavy, normal load out, or HE heavy. Or have a slider for individual calibers. I don't see how this is complex. 

Edited January 2, 2020 by WelshZeCorgi

[arkhangelsk]

Sure, you can lock it in on Ship Design, but then you deprive the players of the realistic option to change loadouts for each sortie, and that would mean they would spend even more time mulling over it.

[akd]

4 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

It is more realistic to separate them, but you do have to balance this against the complexity of pre-planning that this forces onto the players. Imagine this screen popping up:

Naval Battle: Close to your Home Port
Available forces: 4 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 12 light cruisers, 36 destroyers.
Accept / Decline fight.

You click Accept and instead of warping into the battle, you are stalled by a screen:

Please select the loadout you want for your battleships.

And you have to select (or confirm) ammo for 60 ships before you can flip into combat...

Immediately before battle is not when ammo allocations would be made. It would either be a per ship design choice (allowing for a simple "refit" to change allocation) or a doctrine choice that would apply to all ships of a type / role at the time.

[monbvol]

Rule the Waves(either version) actually handles this pretty much the optimal way.

Rather than locking it at ship design or having to change it each sortie it allows you to set default loads that you can tailor in various ways.  It strikes a very nice balance of not being intrusive, realism, but still letting you tailor your ammunition loads to the situation you find yourself in.

I would hope a similar feature can be worked out for this game.

[RAMJB]

8 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

It is more realistic to separate them, but you do have to balance this against the complexity of pre-planning that this forces onto the players. Imagine this screen popping up:

Naval Battle: Close to your Home Port
Available forces: 4 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 12 light cruisers, 36 destroyers.
Accept / Decline fight.

You click Accept and instead of warping into the battle, you are stalled by a screen:

Please select the loadout you want for your battleships.

And you have to select (or confirm) ammo for 60 ships before you can flip into combat...

 

Actually it wouldn't be this way. RTW does it very well - there's a tab called "Doctrines" where you can detail the specific loadout of your warships by size, class, etc. Also you do set doctriines of what kind of ammo to be fired to what  - but that shouldn't be needed here as battles are a much more "hands on" affair.

Ammunition types should be indeed separate - and not only that, magazines too. If the magazine of a turret ran out of ammo, that was it for that turret in that engagement. Well, mostly. There were exceptions to that but they came with pretty dangerous design tradeoffs...the standard would be more or less what I stated.

[Steeltrap]

11 hours ago, WelshZeCorgi said:

Why would you do that? Couldn't it just be 50/50 by default? Or when you build your ship, select AP heavy, normal load out, or HE heavy. Or have a slider for individual calibers. I don't see how this is complex. 

A large part of the issue is HE remains far too effective against what ought to be heavily armoured targets, especially BBs.

The simple fact is if you check the loads of most large gunned warships from the start of WW1 and onwards they reduced their HE shells as the war progressed. 

Here's a comment on the Royal Navy 13.5" mkV gun from Navweaps.com referring to HMS Lion.

During the early part of the war, this was changed to 110 rounds per gun of 33 APC, 38 CPC and 39 HE. By the time of Jutland (Skagerrak), she carried 66 APC, 22 CPC and 22 HE. The final war outfit was 77 APC (Greenboys) and 33 CPC per gun (0 HE). The outfits for the other 13.5" (34.3 cm) battlecruisers had similar changes.

APC or CAP - Armor Piercing Capped or (rarely used) Capped Armor Piercing. Most AP shells have a hard steel cap fitted over the nose which is intended to exert a high initial force on the face of the armor. In addition, a ballistic cap is usually fitted over the AP Cap to provide a more streamlined shape for better aerodynamic characteristics.

CPC - Common Pointed Capped. British designation for capped shells of 6 inch (15.2 cm) and larger for use against lightly armored targets. Used a mild steel cap. Little armor penetration capability but large bursting charge. Obsolete by World War II.

Greenboy - Improved British AP projectile developed late in World War I. The ballistic cap for these projectiles was painted green to distinguish them from older models, hence the nickname. Following the failure of British AP projectiles to detonate properly during the 1915 Battle of Jutland (Skagerrak), the Royal Navy began an intensive effort to produce better versions. These were introduced into service starting in 1918 and had a new delay-action base fuze. Greenboys had better armor penetration abilities compared to the older models, thanks to an improved body and the new "Hadfield" hardened AP cap.

HE (UK) is the same as HC - High Capacity. A USN designation for projectiles intended for use against lightly armored targets. Contains a relatively large amount of explosive as compared to an armor piercing or common projectile. Burster was between 7.0% to 12.6% of total projectile weight.

The loadout from early 1918 featured NO HE shells at all. Why? Because it was known HE rounds don't sink or cripple decently armoured targets, and that's what your large guns are meant to do. The Greenboys were for heavily armoured targets, and the CPC would work against anything else. Indeed the Greenboys were expected to be such an improvement over the Jutland-era APC that it's been suggested the results almost certainly would've been considerably different had they been available (reports showed the AP performance to be very poor, which is why some German ships were able to survive a relatively high number of large calibre hits).

IMO the damage model still needs a lot of work if it is to approximate reality. HE is simply still too powerful.

Cheers

[WelshZeCorgi]

@Steeltrap

It was just some number I burped out, no real thought included. Of course I would prefer if more realistic ratios, or simply, realistic standards were in place to allow such game designs to not be abused. 

[Steeltrap]

22 hours ago, WelshZeCorgi said:

@Steeltrap

It was just some number I burped out, no real thought included. Of course I would prefer if more realistic ratios, or simply, realistic standards were in place to allow such game designs to not be abused. 

I understand, and I certainly didn't mean to suggest your idea was "wrong" or silly. On reflection I probably ought to have made that clear, sorry.

I also didn't take the time to agree with you about the main point you made, lol. The devs are well aware they've not done individual magazines as yet, and I pointed out "magazine detonations" in the game don't even reduce available ammo (which they confirmed hasn't been implemented).

The reason I included all that other stuff is because I think people generally have a misguided view of the sorts of ammunition the "ship killer" guns (i.e. large calibre naval rifles) tended to use.

That 'other naval arcade game' certainly doesn't help because it's a mass of brainless small calibre HE flinging guns burning famous (and paper/unbuilt) BBs to the point of sinking.

The other reason of course is to make the point the damage model still has some major problems, including HE being too effective in certain conditions.

The devs are aware of it and have been attempting to address it, which is good, but there's still plenty more to be done. Blowing up a CA at 6km with a 6" round through the broadside "bow belt extended" (or stern for that matter) is something I see all the time, so clearly magazine protection etc is either non-existent or needs plenty of work. Again, devs have said the whole 'citadel/box' concept is still to be realised, so there's reason to think it will improve.

Cheers

Edited January 4, 2020 by Steeltrap

[WelshZeCorgi]

No worries, mate.

[Steeltrap]

5 hours ago, WelshZeCorgi said:

No worries, mate.

I didn't think you were bothered, but after reading my initial one realised I could have done it better.

Cheers